Sorry in advance if this is long-winded.

So as you all know, Skyrim's coming to the Switch this month, and I've been back and forth on whether or not I'm going to snatch it up.

I still remember when Skyrim first came out. All the hype, the critical acclaim, the industry-wide excitement on how this game would suck you in and never let you go.

I bought into the hype, got Skyrim....and wound up returning it after maybe 2-3 weeks.

I can't remember everything about my experience with it, but I can remember my main complaint: the characters were boring. Maybe I was spoiled by other RPGs like Mass Effect 2 and KOTOR 2, but I disengaged with Skyrim pretty quickly. The characters all felt like pieces of wood, with only a couple of canned responses and no opportunities to grow. And since my taste in RPGs was purely character-driven at the time, I just found no reason to keep exploring caves and doing side quests.

Who cares about bringing Lydia with me? She's more of a pack mule/weapon than a person. And why would I want to marry anyone when they're all so plain? Combat's ok, but there's only so many times I can kill bandits in the woods. Where's my reason to care about any of this?

So after I kept getting killed by this ice troll, I said sayonara to Skyrim.

Fast forward to now. I'm going through Far Cry 3 mixed with other things, and despite it having the same issue of not really being given a reason to engage with the world, I find myself having a good time whenever I pick up the controller.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm much more into upgrading myself and taking on new challenges than I was back then (thanks, Zelda and Metroid). Maybe the dangling carrot of slowly taking over the island area by area is keeping me going. Maybe the enemies and animals are just more dynamic here. Maybe I have more fun scoping out a camp and systematically taking it down than I do exploring caves. Or maybe guns just do more for me than swords. Ok, that last one's definitely not it. Nick loves him some swordplay.

Whatever the reason is, I find myself not really caring that the main characters I interact with are pretty bland (I'm not even that big on Vaas). I'm just having a blast exploring and doing side missions. And those divergent, crazy moments everyone was raving about when Skyrim came out are actually getting joyful reactions from me here rather than just shrugs.

So that's the background. I'm here with my shiny new Switch, and Skyrim, if I engage with it like I have Far Cry, would give me plenty of hours on it. Plus any third party sales on Switch would only add to the likelihood that we get more on it, which is definitely a positive. But I would hate myself if I spent 60 bucks just to tune out again. So what do you guys think?

If you didn't like it then, I doubt you'll like it now.

While I think it's possibly my favorite game of all time, if it didn't impress you then, it's not going to do much to impress you now. Not much has changed fundamentally with it.

I will say that the story did nothing for me, but after a while, the simple mechanics of stealth archery made exploration really fun. It's a bit overpowered, but sneaking through tombs and laying out enemies with single arrows to the head is just fun on a basic level. It takes a while to get to that point, though.

Nah, the star of skyrim was the world, not the characters. There were a handful of interesting quests, but most content was just moving around in the world looking for new dungeons to go through and hopefully find slightly better gear. Back in the day the characters were pretty weak already, and that only looks worse now that we're in 2017.

Yeah, Skyrim's not really the game for emotional investment in the characters and story. It's good for exploring an open world and questing.

Like Rorie said, try going stealth archer, especially if you enjoyed that sort of thing in Far Cry 3. The gameplay of Skyrim's not gonna feel as tight as that game though.

I had a great time with Skyrim and then haaaated it for a spell. I wanted more actiony combat at the time, and after getting it from Dragon's Dogma I was able to go back to Skyrim and enjoy it for what it was. Maybe you'll have a similar experience if you went back to it after playing Far Cry 3. Just a big open world to explore and fuck around in. The hooks aren't quite the same as they are in Far Cry 3 though (no real equivalent to hunting to craft upgrades and taking over the island, though levelling up through action and clearing dungeons and quests might be the closest analogues).

I think your comment about the characters feeling like pieces of wood is kind of what makes Skyrim so appealing to so many people.

Skyrim is less like a linear RPG that stands out because of the high quality of it's combat or narrative or anything (though I think both are largely fine) and rather that it stands out because it's just a big ol' dollhouse. Skyrim has practically become what a modern RPG-maker should look like, it's just a big box of toys you kind of poke around in and enjoy looking at and making up your own stories. I suppose in that way, it's a purer RPG experience than most these days. You kind of just have to enjoy roaming around in the world and having fun trying to play around with the way all the systems intersect with one another, as opposed to playing it because you love the combat or anything.

There is only one correct way to play Skyrim on the Switch. And that is to recreate Link with all the amiibo gear and pretend it's a pseudo-Legend of Zelda game.

I don't think anyone is going to make an especially strong defense of Skyrim's writing or RPG mechanics. It's a big dumb sandbox with a lot of places to go and a lot of systemic interaction for you to mess around with. If you can approach it from that angle, I imagine you can probably have fun with it. I personally have gotten a little sick of Bethesda's style of game design, but Skyrim is less insulting than Fallout 4 and probably easier to go back to than trying to play Oblivion or Morrowind in the year 2017.

Character and plot are definitely not what skyrim is about(probably why i have a couple hundred hours in on two platforms and never beat the main quest lol). I enjoyed the world and discovering new places randomly while punching dragons and giants in the face. Mods on PC helped it age a lot better too so not sure how the switch version will be.

Skyrim is one of my favorite games of all time. That said, I don't know if I could really play it on any platform other than PC with some mods, at least not anymore. If you have a way to play the Special Edition on PC, do that.

I'd wait until after the Switch version comes out to see how good that version is, though. It might be full of bugs - Bethesda's known for that, and there's at least one version (PS3) of Skyrim that's so problematic GB excluded it from their GOTY discussion. Even if the Switch version comes out OK and relatively bug-free, I'd recommend the PS4 or Xbox One version over it because it's just not a great game for portability. Exploring a huge world and soaking it all in isn't something I'd recommend doing on a small screen during a bus ride or on the couch while someone else watches bad TV with the volume turned up.

If you enjoy wandering around a world, though, there's no better game for doing so.

I remember playing Skyrim when it came out and feeling lukewarm about it. Then I replayed it last year when the HD version came out and it was by far my best gaming experience that year. I think the two biggest reasons why I changed my mind about it was time and place and knowing what I was getting into. Understanding that the game is all about going for a 3-5 hour walk in the wilderness and having the time and right mindset for that is imperative to making the game enjoyable. I would absolutely recommend it as a great game to go back to (my experience with Bethesda RPGs in general is that they get better the second time around), but with the caveat that you need to be "ready" for it.

On Switch? No, the vanilla Skyrim experience is very lacking by today's standards.

Don't bother playing Skyrim again. There's nothing in the later parts of the game that's worth trudging through stuff you don't like.

It sounds like your expectations were misaligned. It might be worth looking at Skyrim again if you understand what you'll be getting, but I have trouble believing the Switch will have a good version That is not powerful hardware.

No. As others have said, if you didn't liked Skyrim when it came out, the vanilla Switch version is not going to address any of your complains.

I really enjoyed it at the time of release because I hadn't played anything like it before. Not sure how I'd feel about it now. I'm guessing it doesn't hold up.

I would absolutely not even bother with the Switch version, especially if you didn't like Skyrim when it first game out. Can't even imagine Skyrim without mods. Its not even a snob thing, mods objectively make the game a lot better and fix a lot of issues and make the combat somewhat interesting.

No...

I recently loaded my old save in Skyrim recently for the first time in years and wound up sinking even more time into it. There's still something magical about that world to me.

That said, if you gave it a shot for two weeks at launch then that's probably enough to say it isn't going to be your kind of game. If you do want to try it again, it will be cheaper on the other platforms.

Skyrim has been milked to death tbh. From Bethesda, I want to see RAGE, The Evil Within and Dishonored on the go, they could perform well.

Skyrim is one of my all time favorites, but other people liking a game is at best a reason to try a game, not force yourself to play it. There are too many games out there and too little time to spend on them, so pick a game you are truly excited to play.

@nicksmi56: As someone who spend around 80% of the time around Skyrim with actual modding, the vanilla version of the game sucks, I'm 100% certain that it also does so on the Switch.

If you get the unofficial Legendary Skyrim userpatch, SkyUI and Ordinator the game on PC already becomes twice as good (you don't need anything else). If you check out Skyrim again never do that on console. Its also cheap, if you wait for the sale, you can get the full package for like 5-10 bucks.

Just do yourself a favor don't play it on the Switch, please.

Nope.

The reason to play Skyrim, I think, is not to engage with the story or the characters, necessarily, but to learn about the world. There's nothing quite like it for deep, engrossing, immersive lore; I think of it as sort of a museum. You wander through, interact with some of the exhibits, read a whole lot, and just look at all the artifacts and environments. This idea is sort of driven home for me by the wooden, mannequin-like characters and the way you can zoom in on and twirl around any object in your inventory.

I think it comes down to how bad you want to complete the game. If the draw of radiant quests and exploring doesn't get you then maybe the lore might. I never beat the game but I've heard the conclusion is epic.

I would say give it a shot on PC. The mods help to keep that game alive. I don't think the switch is the best place to play Skyrim.

If you didn't like it then, you won't like it now.

I liked Skyrim when it came out (finished the main quest and some other questlines; played about 50ish hours) but if you didn't enjoy it I have a hard time thinking the Switch version is going to change that. A lot of what made Skyrim great at the time (like its worlds and its systems) is much less impressive these days, and a lot of what made it a slog or annoying is still applicable (especially without mods.)

Frankly I'd have a hard time going back to Skyrim after Breath of the Wild. BOTW had a much more engaging and varied world, and while it didn't have Skyrim's skill systems it also didn't have its cut and paste dungeons or repetition issues.

I'd say, no you won't like it.

After 6 years, Skyrim's gameplay feels more dated than ever. And at least to me it wasn't even that great then.

it is still a great sandbox if you enjoy that sort of thing. Really it's a game that's best enjoyed heavily modded. Which is a pretty neat thing in a way.

God no. Vanilla Skyrim 6 years after release? I've always been confused as to why it's becoming a Switch game. When you can regularly get it on PC for £5 and mod the shit out of it I have a hard time picturing the person that's rushing out to spend £50 on it for Switch